Dual SIM Hack For Single SIM Slot Phones.

[RoyTecTips] shows us an ingenious hack which turns a single-SIM-slot phone into a fully functioning dual-SIM phone. All that’s needed for this hack is a heat-gun, solvent, micro SD card, nano SIM and some glue. The trick is that the phone has a SIM reader on the backside of an SD-card slot. Through some detailed dissection and reconstruction work, you can piggy-back the SIM on the SD card and have them both work at the same time.

Making the SD/SIM Franken-card is no picnic. First you start by filing away the raised bottom edge of the micro SD card and file down the side until the writing is no longer visible. Next get a heat gun and blast your nano SIM card until the plastic melts away. Then mark where the SIM card’s brains go and glue it on. Turn the phone on then, hey presto, you now have a dual SIM phone while keeping your SD storage.

This hack is reported to work on many Samsung phones that end in “7” and some that end in “5”, along with some 8-series phones from Huawei and Oppo clones of the Samsungs. Since you’re only modifying the SIM card, it’s a fairly low-risk hack for a phone. Combining two cards into one is certainly a neat trick, almost as neat as shoe-horning a microcontroller into an SD card. We wonder how long it will be before we see commercial dual SIM/SD cards on the market.

[Update] I got a little confused on this one as we only have the single sim variants of these phones where I live. this hack is for dual sim phones that either accept 2 sim cards or 1 sim + 1 SD card. This hack solves this problem and allows 2 sims plus 1 SD card in these phones. Sorry for the confusion and thanks to all who pointed this out in the comments.

That’s how the CDMA telcos in North America used to be. That way they could prevent customers from being able to buy phones, new or used, that were either originally sold by another company or sold as unlocked phones usable on any carrier – as has long been possible with GSM telcos. Sprint, Verizon and other CDMA telcos say they allow some phones from other CDMA telcos, but the policy is deeply buried and full of weasel-words which amount to FOAD, no guarantees that any functionality other than voice calls will work.

With an unlocked GSM phone that supports all the frequencies, you only need an active SIM card and can swap it among as many unlocked phones as you want.

In Europe and Asia, CDMA phones have long had multi-frequency support and RUIM (Removable User Identity Module) cards. They’ve had phones with one RUIM slot and up to three SIM slots, very useful for people who travel a lot where roaming charges cost more than paying for multiple phone services.

In the past few years, as Sprint and Verizon and other CDMA telcos have added 4G technology they’ve adopted SIM (or are they RUIM?) cards. First they were soldered in, as in the Samsung Epic 4G and Motorola Photon Q. People hacked in slots so those phones could be used with other telcos when unlocked. Now they’re in slots and theoretically a Sprint Galaxy S4 could be unlocked and used on Verizon.

The CDMA era were some very dark days in Canada. It used to be that you could only feasibly buy the phones from the carrier on their terms.

I vividly remember the days before the iPhone and being told “we will never carry GSM/sim card phones on our network.”
Thankfully, in this case, an iPhone was a blessing and a curse, because now I can easily use gsm and unlocked phones, but 90% of the phones available are now android and iphone.

Still hoping that the major carriers up here will carry the new Blackberry because I really want a nice android phone with a keyboard, and the DROID’s are sorely outdated.

You’re ignoring the fact that the SIM card holds cryptographic secrets that they use to authencate you against the network (and also, in most cases, the network against you). Inside that SIM, these are actually physically secure. As a software setting… not so much. Your idea is not really what I’d aim for!

Except MetroPCS, who insist on knowing and whitelisting your device’s IMEI, forcibly tying it to your SIM until you get a new phone and jump thru the hoops to update their sense of what your current IMEI “should be” because of some stupidly imagined security concern or whatever. Really kinda sad. There seems to be a grace period during which a new phone will work with the old SIM so you can call them and have a machine automatically update the IMEI but it’s not as simple as it could and should be. If they can keep two or more proper IMEIs associated with your number that would be way nicer, but I never read anything that suggested it.

Exactly. If your phone breaks, or if you travel and buy a local card, or if you buy a new phone. You are all set in a couple of minutes.
In my experience, in most places you are better off getting your own phone, instead of from the network (at least in europe)

I disagree, the sim is a smart card with security elements programed into the chip by the provider, while the phone is an end user device that can’t be trusted in any way. Rooted, viruses, bad programing etc. This way the network provider doesn’t have to only allow “secure” phones and vise versa users can byod from anywhere and still get service. How exactly would your suggestion of simply using software work to secure anything. Comprise the host and the software goes with it.

With your suggestion what would happen would be like Apple’s touch sensor, a secure hardware element that is not removable without destroying the phone. Thus vendors could lock you in more not less.

Well the problem was not really the batteries but a screw over the positive battery trace … as soon as the silk and mask wears away than it would short and boom … a washer is now used and they are safe enough

Has anyone tried nano SIM extensions? Then you don’t need to hack SD card, because it’s pretty thin, just stick extensions on our storage media, route flex ribbon through the edge of the tray, and stick new port on the back of device. I personally use pretty thick case on my phone, so I’d just have to make hollow compartment for it. And changing sim card would be waay quicker as well. And they are for like $2 shipped from China.

Good old (and cool) days I had a 7-n-1 rewrite-able SIM card plus a USB SIM card reader/writer, amazing thing, you could switch the number via the built-in feature menu!
Then everything is fsck’d and encryption (and anti-copy protection) added to the SIM cards, so could not be replicated…

Well, yeah. The point is if you can copy SIM cards, you can clone them. Not just yours but other peoples.

(As an aside, I remember BT used to sell a phone that violated the part of the GSM spec that stated that the billing should be done on the network or the SIM card. They put the billing in the phone. Specifically, the credit was stored in an EEPROM. (I2C, I think) People had figured out that, if they added a little device to rewrite it on boot, you could use £10 credit, power it off, power it back on and have £10 credit to use over again…)

The process is NOT a hack for a single SIM phone – it is more accurately a Micro SD hack for a Dual SIM phone. Many dual SIM phones allow either a second SIM or a Micro SD card in the second slot – this hack allows you to use both at the same time. IT DOES NOT TURN A SINGLE SIM PHONE INTO A DUAL SIM PHONE.

Happens with a lot phones, being offered on markets with dual sim capabilities and get nerfed knowingly for markets where dual sim phones are not the norm (IE North America). Sometimes they go as far as removing all the hardware for the secondary sim, but often they cut corners by simply replacing the plastic dongle that holds the sim & SD and they load the phone with slightly different software, nothing that can’t be bypassed with a combo of a cheap China purchase and a bit of software thinkering.

You’re right. Some phones have SIM slot and combo SIM/microSD slot, so you can use microSD only if you use single SIM. If you use dual SIM you can’t physicaly put microSD because second SIM occupies that space. I don’t get manufacturer’s logic behind that, SIM and microSD use different interfaces and they’re not mutualy exclusive. However, this hack exploits that stupidity and makes enough space for SIM and microSD. So it in fact makes SIM+SIMorSD phone a SIM+SIMandSD phone. It doesn’t make a single SIM phone into dual SIM.

THANK YOU. I watched the whole video trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Nothing in it added a set of pins or anything like a SIM KVM switch so I couldn’t figure out how the phone was seeing two SIMs at the same time. It had the second sim slot it just doesn’t have an appropriately-shaped plastic sim holder.

Misleading title. ..why haven’t you changed it yet Jack? Others have already pointed out the mistake..Its just a hack where you can use both the sim cards and the SD card in a hybrid slot dual sim phone!

I’ve stuck by the title as the manufacturers of the phone are selling these devices as single sim phones, Yes it has the hardware internals already there but you the slot where you put the SIM/SD is designed so you can only put one SD card and one SIM card inside the phone. Take a look at the sim card tray of a Samsung galaxy S7 Edge and you will understand.

“the manufacturers of the phone are selling these devices as single sim phones”

No, they’re actually selling two variants for each of these devices – one is the one you’re thinking of, and the other is what they actually market as single-SIM, and this hack doesn’t work for it – as in, it has no SIM-xor-SD socket, just a regular SD socket. I know because I have the single-SIM variant.

No problem, I was puzzled too at shopping time :) I’m in Europe and got my single-SIM model from a local shop. The internetz seem to confirm that the dual-SIM model is targeted to the Asian market, but I don’t have any first-hand information about that (it’s still available in Europe through Amazon, for example).

That’s fine, but as pointed out by a number of posts, the assumptions you have made are incorrect . I stand by my comment. Its still a hack where you can use both sim cards and SD card in a dual sim hybrid phone wherein originally you could have only used one sim slot and a SD card or two sim slots with no SD card! I guess you have come to the same conclusions as well looking at your later posts. In my humble opinion, its time to change the title, don’t you think so too?

Hi, recently I just googled about a diy multiplexed sim card reader without success. I found ‘simore’ have a real cool dual and triple adapters. And edaboard explain a little in http://www.edaboard.com/thread208167.html

My guess is it wont work unless there is/you ordered the dual sim version.
Again, this hack is not to turn a single sim phone into a dual sim, its to make a dual sim phone use the memory card at the same time.
You need two modems for this

awesome info from everyone, super informative. Personally i believe if a phone has been manufactured to be a dual sim operating device you should be able to access the full functionalities as you are paying the full price.